


Stronger

by etux



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (??), 3.10 Update Fic, Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Hockey and Figure Skating and Video Blogging and Sweet Sweet Dance Moves, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, and also Baking, coming to terms with your sexuality can be hard, of sorts, warnings for one f slur, with family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-18 04:11:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8148724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etux/pseuds/etux
Summary: “It’s just been a bad week and… I have to be stronger.”   It’s a mantra he’s been repeating to himself for a long time.  Story of Eric Bittle and what being stronger means for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, the update was a happy update and my heart sings with joy _but still_. I've been emotional about my boy Eric Bittle for a while now and I just couldn't help it anymore.

Eric takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. 

He feels so tired. Not just from crying and staying up until three at the morning to yell at his stupid, caring, _loving_ boyfriend, but from… all of this. Life.

 _Life_. He’d chuckle if he weren’t on the verge of choking on all the sobs his desperately holding in. His life is so ridiculously good. He has family, he has friends, he has a boyfriend. Despite how long his week has been and how he feels now, at the end of it, he’s not in Georgia anymore. He got away. He has everything he used to dream of. Or if not _everything_ , then at least almost everything. He has enough. _More than_ enough.

Eric lets out a shaky breath.

“It’s just been a bad week and… I have to be _stronger_.”

It’s a mantra he’s been repeating to himself for a long time.

 

***

The second day of third grade, Eric Richard Bittle comes home from school with a black eye. This would be fine, really, it’s not a big deal, Eric can handle it, he’s handled it before and he will continue to handle it - if it weren’t for Suzanne Bittle.

Eric’s mother is waiting for him in the kitchen when he arrives. He’d try to hide it, but this time _‘it’_ is a black eye instead of just bruises on his arms or his legs like it was last year. So he drops his back bag on the floor and waits for his mother to turn around.

“ _Sooo_ , did you learn anything new?” Suzanne asks, dropping chopped potatoes into a pot, her back still to Eric.

“Learned not to say _anything_ to Matthew Mason,” Eric mutters and kicks his back bag for a good measure. This instantly makes his mother turn around, brows furrowed in concern. Eric’s a well-behaved young man _all of the time_. That’s what Eric heard his mother say to Mrs. Wilkins just a week ago.

It’s pretty obvious when Suzanne notices her son’s eye.

“Oh, _Dicky_.”

The sad sigh of his mother feels much heavier for Eric than a disappointed one would.

“Matthew Mason, you say?” Suzanne muses as she goes to the freezer. “Is it still figure skating he’s picking on you for?”

“Yeah.” Eric takes the bag frozen peas and kitchen towel his mother gives him. He wraps the peas in the towel with more care than needed. He _does not_ tell his mother that figure skating isn’t the only reason Matthew Mason is up on his case. That it’s his baking and his clothes and his hair and his talking and walking and _way of existing_ as well.

His mother doesn’t need to know that. Because she doesn’t need to know what Matthew Mason calls him behind the teachers’ backs. Because it’s not true.

“Don’t tell Coach,” Eric says quietly when he presses the towel with the peas inside of it on his eye. Suzanne’s sad smile turns into a sad frown, and Eric sighs. “ _Please_. He’ll make quit figure skating and focus on football only. I don’t want that.”

His mother sighs in turn.

“Your daddy loves you, Dicky,” she says. “And I promise he won’t make you quit skating. He knows how much you like it.”

Eric doubts that. He thinks of the way his father pushes him to be faster and stronger on the field, to steal the ball and not be afraid of anyone or anything as long as he’s holding it. Eric’s not sure his father knows it’s possible to _like_ other things than football.

“You are _strong_ , Dicky. So much stronger than Matthew Mason or any of those other boys, you hear me?”

Eric doubts that too. But at least being stronger is something he can do. Changing his father’s mind about anything remotely involving football is not.

***

Eric quits football altogether about a year later.

It’s a messy event including a crying Eric in the middle of a football field after his first tackle. It’s a miracle he managed to go that long without getting tackled - football is a contact sport and Eric’s been running around with a ball as long as he can remember. But.

One hit and that’s it.

It makes Eric curl up right there and then, in the middle of the game, and after _his mother_ scoops him up and takes him off the field, there isn’t really a doubt in Eric’s mind. This is it. This is enough of football for him.

So he pours everything he has into figure skating. And avoiding his father’s sad eyes whenever football comes up in the dinner table.

Eric doesn’t want to talk about it. Coach doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s all good.

All Eric needs to be is stronger.

***

Eric loves figure skating.

He loves the music and the costumes and the beauty and grace of it all. It’s hard work and it doesn’t bring him many friends but he loves it.

Other things Eric loves are:

\- His mother

\- His MooMaw

\- His daddy

\- Baking

\- Destiny’s Child (especially Beyoncé)

All these things combined with Eric’s big eyes and clean shirts somehow make him… _funny_ in the eyes of Matthew Mason and the other boys in his class.

Eric doesn’t care. They are wrong and all he needs to do is a little bit stronger.

***

Eric skates and bakes. He gets stronger. He smiles and laughs and starts watching youtube videos. He likes to listen to people in other cities, states, countries, _continents_ talking about their lives. It’s almost like having friends.

***

Eric’s twelve when the utility closet incident happens. 

The boys behind it all are Coach’s boys, and Eric is sure that means Coach has heard at least some of the things the football team says about him.

Eric keeps his head up. He skates harder, bakes more. Starts filming shaky videos of himself baking and skating with the camera on his flip phone. He makes a youtube account but doesn’t upload anything.

He’s strong and he’s nothing the boys say he is. It’s fine

***

Eric uploads his first video on youtube. 

It starts with him in his room, waving at the people on the other side of the screen, with a cheery, “Hey y’all in the Internet Land!” and it ends with a shaky shot of a beautiful apple pie on the kitchen table, ready to be eaten.

In between there’s Eric filming himself walk down the stairs from his room to the kitchen, baking of that beautiful apple pie, and some sweet, sweet dance moves as Eric sings along to Beyoncé’s _Ring the Alarm_. 

He gets ten views in a week, and it feels great. He starts making and uploading videos at least once a week.

***

The first comment Eric gets on a video is, “Wow! That pie looks great, I wish I could bake like that!” and it feels _exactly_ like having a friend.

The second comment Eric gets on a video is, “figure skating? gay much??” and Eric deletes it before taking a three weeks long break from filming or uploading any videos.

***

Eric is fourteen and aggressively training for next year’s Southern Junior Regionals. He’s also part of the Coed Club Hockey Team now that they live in Madison, and he knows the Regionals will be the last time he figure skates. It’s too expensive to continue to train with Katya after that.

Besides, hockey makes Coach happier. And it’s safer at school. Or not safer but… less suspicious. Less distinctive. Less funny. _Less faggotty_. Less likely to make people at Eric’s new school to think anything that’s not true.

***

Sometimes Eric worries.

He hasn’t had a crush on a girl yet, and he doesn’t understand why anyone would want to kiss one. Let alone do anything more.

But then he reminds himself that he’s not even fifteen. There’s still plenty of time.

He just has to be stronger and remember that nothing that other people say or think means anything unless it’s true. And it’s not.

***

“You know me and your daddy will love you no matter what, right Dicky?” Suzanne asks one evening when she and Eric are baking together. She has a warm smile on her face, but something tightens in the bottom of Eric’s stomach anyway.

“Whoever you mind find, we want you to bring home,” his mother continues and now Eric honest-to-God feels like throwing up _right now_ and _right here_. And yet… there’s maybe something warm and hopeful in there as well?

Or at least there is until Suzanne continues with; “Of course I _hope_ you bring home a sweet, pretty girl, but any boy of yours is welcome too.” and something inside Eric dies.

His mother is trying. She really is. Even if it really is just that, _trying_.

Lucky for Eric he doesn’t have to worry about it. He’s strong, _stronger_ , and it’s alright. He’s not going to bring home a boy. Ever.

God, it even sounds _absurd_ in his head. Bringing home a boy, holding hands with a boy, kissing a boy, sleeping next to a boy, smelling the hair of a boy, _liking_ a boy -- ridiculous.

Completely ridiculous.

***

Eric puts his figure skates in a box at the back of his closet after the Regionals. He feels a bit bittersweet and sad, but it’s alright. It really is.

He still gets to skate, even if his skates don’t have toe picks, and he has a great team. He still has baking and his videos. He likes hockey. It’s a real sport, full of real, _right_ boys just like Eric, and even if he sometimes wonders...

It’s still not true. He’s stronger than all the words that have been said about him. He’s stronger he’s stronger he’s stronger.

He doesn’t have to believe mean comments on his videos, because everyone knows anyone can say _anything_ on the Internet. It’s not true.

Eric would know. Because he’s stronger.

***

Baking and hockey and baking and video blog. That’s Eric’s life. He bakes and he skates and he films and he gets stronger. He smiles and laughs and is stronger. He bakes and skates and bakes and films and is stronger. He--

***

Eric is seventeen. He’s the captain of his hockey team. And he’s… everything Matthew Mason and every other person in his life has ever said. And it---

It hurts.

It hurts that he’s only now seeing it, that so many other people have seen it for so much longer. That he’s spent years and years saying it’s not true. Telling _himself_ it’s not true.

***

 _I don’t like girls_ , Eric thinks to himself as he stares into the mirror.

“You have to be _stronger_ ,” is what comes out of his mouth instead.

 _I will never like girls_ , Eric tries again on another day.

“I _have_ to be stronger,” is what he says.

***

_I’m gay._

“Be stronger.”

***

Eric leaves Madison, leaves Georgia.

He _is_ stronger.

***

 

So when two years later -- when everything is supposed to be better and different and _dear Lord, didn’t Eric promise he would never_ ever _hide from everyone again_ \-- Eric has to call Jack his _friend_ time after time after time, when he smiles at Ransom and Holster and Lardo and Chowder and even at his mother when they Skype and says, “I’m fine” when he wants to say “I’m in love with the most incredible boy, and the only thing better than that is the fact that he loves me back” --

Eric tells himself, _you have to be_ _stronger_. 

It’s what he’s been told. It’s what he’s learned. It’s how he gets through everything.

_You have to be stronger._

It’s his mantra, his guideline, his prayer to the God he doesn’t have the strength to believe in, his compass, his saviour. It’s _him_. 

_I have to be stronger._

It’s what he tells himself in the morning, looking at himself in the mirror. The bags under his eyes, the tiredness of his smile.

It’s what he whispers into the dark of his room at night, when he’s put away his laptop after a Skype call with Jack. It’s in the clothes he wears, in every song he belts in the shower at seven thirty am.

It’s what he bakes into every pie. 

It’s in the love. The only love he feels for himself.

“I have to be _stronger_.”

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“Bittle. _No_. You don’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> There is now a happier continuation piece for this [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8161921).
> 
> ([if you liked this fic, maybe reblog this on tumblr?](http://euseevius.tumblr.com/post/151095868981/together-were-a-stronger-team-oh-stronger))


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